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A Tour of the Ards.

This article was originally published in the June 2010 edition of Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly. http://mnmotorcycle.com/. The bike had featured in the magazine before, hence the familiarity of the first few paragraphs. The whole thing was done as a reply to a 'Geezer with a Grudge' column.

_____

After major surgery on its cylinder heads and a whole series
of maintenance tasks and modifications, my old R75/6 lives again.The last of its original oil seals in the
bevel drive have been replaced, and I have fitted a later swinging arm with a
shock absorber in the shaft drive.A new
horn replaces the feeble original, and an up rated alternator now gives me
scope to plan a whole new series of alterations.All in all it’s been a busy winter, but a
month or two of commuting has shown that things have bedded in and my
confidence in its reliability has been restored.

You may wonder why anyone would want to be bothered with all
this hassle to keep a 1974 bike on the road rather than simply buying something
new and running that for a few years.There is no simple answer to this.Indeed, before this recent bout of maintenance, when I found that the
cylinder compression had dropped by around 50psi only 15,000 miles after a
major rebuild, including an unleaded petrol conversion, the thought of adding a
match to it and just walking away wasn’t that far from my mind.How can professionally fitted valve guides
wear to a point where the valves won’t seal in that kind of mileage?

Despite this when I thought about what I might replace the
old girl with, thoughts of repair always came to the fore.I’m long past trying to prove that I’m the
quickest thing on two wheels (and I have the broken bones to show that I never
was), I don’t want to pose around on a
big cruiser, and the thought of wrestling some king and queenedbehemoth around the off piste roads where I
like to ride fills me with dread.What I
do want is to change the spark plugs and set the tappets without recourse to
special tools, and without having to dismantle half the bike just to get
access.The BM fits the bill in a way
that modern bikes don’t even come close to, so with a little help I fixed
it.Now, with brighter evenings and a
little heat in the air, it’s payback time.

There is plenty of coast near my home in the north east of
Ireland, including the Ards Peninsula, that curved promontory that stretches
from Belfast Lough, southwards around Strangford Lough towards the Mourne
Mountains.Its furthest point is only
around 37 miles from Belfast city centre, but it’s a world away by any other
measure.So, on a bright but misty day, I
headed out to clear a few cobwebs.The
peninsula’s roads have two distinct characters.The inner roads, which run along Strangford Lough, are more sheltered, more
regular, the type of roads where you can set a rhythm to your riding.I have travelled this way so many times that
leaving the town traffic of Newtownards at the northern end of Strangford
brings an expectation, a vision of what lies ahead, the corners, the gear
changes, the places where I can safely get past any slow moving cars.This runs like a computer program through the
bike and I, the old BM smoothly doing exactly what it was built for all those
years ago.

It is no R1, definitely not a Fireblade eater, its big
flywheel limits its ability for instant point and squirt throttle opening, to
the point where it ‘gains speed’ rather thanaccelerates.Wind round that
long, long throttle though, and once the old girl had lifted her skirts, and
that flywheel has gained momentum, and she can shift in a distinctly more
sprightly way than those vintage looks would suggest. The old ATE disk brakes
need a firm squeeze rather than the gentle two finger caress of a modern
bike.They work well enough though, and
are a distinct improvement over the single original disk with its odd half
cable, half hydraulic operating mechanism.Despite the limitations of its almost prehistoric design, and its lack
of cubes when compared to its modern progeny, this bike can still be
deceptively quick over distance in the modern world.

The bends arc onwards, past the walls of Mount Stewart, a
stately home now owned by the National Trust and open to the public, past huge
rocks and the rounded drumlin hills that were left in the wake of the last ice
age.So sheltered is this coast that
even here, at a latitude of around 55 degrees north, Mount Stewart grows a
collection of semi tropical plants outdoors.To my right, beyond mud flats exposed by low tide, the sun sparkles between
the many tiny islands of the Lough, the far shore shimmering in the haze
beyond. There are only really three villages and a few scattered small groups
of houses on this side of the peninsula, and they reel off in fairly quick
succession.First Greyabbey, with its
ancient monastic ruins, then another short blast to Kircubben.

After the old church and pub at Saltwater Brig I turn off
the main road as it veers inland, taking a more scenic route towards
Strangford’s narrow inlet where the tidal flow from a 58 square mile area
swirls and froths througha ½ mile wide
channel.Thus the Viking observation
‘strong fiord’, gives birth to the Lough’s modern name. I stop to get a photo of the bike against a
backdrop of yellow Gorse covered hills, all the time listening carefully for
any other traffic on this narrow twisting road.Whether riding or stationary, there is little room to pass, and little
time for any reaction should anyone come around a corner. At Ballyhenry Island,
there is the wreckage of an old WW2 cargo ship, once used in the Normandy
landings, then brought here for salvage at the end of its life.This incongruous lump of rusting metal
sticking out of the water in what is now a nature reserve is now a popular dive
site.As a child I can remember being
fascinated by one old house here, the entrance arch to which was made from the
jaw bones of a whale.The bones are long
gone, no longer acceptable in the modern world I suppose, although their lack
of environmental concern must be more than paid back by the recently built
plant a mile or so further on that uses the massive energy in the Strangford
tides to generate electricity.

As I reach Portaferry, the last village on the inner side of
the peninsula, a crowd of bikes is waiting to make the short crossing to
Strangford village on the other side of the Lough.The ferry must do well from bikes on a day
such as this as there always seems to be a good natured gathering on either
side.Past the narrows and out to the
Irish Sea coastline, the road follows a rockier and more erratic coastline, punctuated
by numerous small fishing villages.Many
now are mere dormitory towns for Belfast’s spreading influence, or were taken
over years ago as holiday destinations for its industrial workers before cheap
flights moved the ideal destination to the guaranteed warmth of Spain’s Costa del
Sol.Still the caravan (trailer) parks
persist as weekend retreats, many on old WW2 air fields, a place for kids to
experience the sandcastle holidays of old.

The old BM cruises well in fourth or fifth gear on smaller
roads.The clunky gear change so often
criticised on all these air heads, can be minimised by careful clutch
adjustment but never eliminated, making its ability to pull cleanly from not
much more than tick over very welcome.The handling is secure over corners often strewn with gravel or even the
detritus left by dairy herds.Mudguards
that are very generous by modern standards are also a welcome feature in such
circumstances. After Kearney, the single tracks are left behind and my speed
increases.The harbour in every village
thereafter has its own tale to tell, from the concrete and steel of Portavogie,
the last major fishing port, to the lifeboat and lighthouse on the stone built
pier at Donaghadee.As I ride further
north now, the roads widen to provide for Belfast’s commuters.We hammer on through Millisle, Donaghadee,
Groomsport and then to home in Bangor.The speed limit is 60mph, a speed the bike could easily exceed all day
long without stress.Being built for the
German Autobahns, it does handle at speed, not with the precision of a sports
bike, but predictably, and without fuss.

This isn’t a run that requires me to spend time preparing as
I would for a major bike holiday, but after a few days of wending my way to
work between rows of almost stationary traffic, and dealing with all the
hassles that cross my desk when I am there, there is nothing better than this
for a little escape from the cares of the world.Give the traffic an hour or so to clear after
the evening rush home, then freedom is within easy reach.Good roads, good scenery.Everyone should have a few favourite roads
such as this.It is, for me, what bikes
are about, every bit as much as the challenge of cramming 6 or 7 hundred miles under
the bikes wheels.

Would my biking be improved by having a modern bike?Here I must disagree (and I admit I don’t
often do that) with MMM’s own Geezer, Thomas Day.Old road bikes ROCK!Fun on bikes wasn’t invented with last year’s
model range, and the fun to $ ratio of a good old bike is way greater than that
of a new one.On average my annual
maintenance spend on this bike must be about the equivalent of a couple of
months payments on a new one.If it gets
an extra stone chip or two in the paint, then I won’t be worrying about it in
the way I would if I had just mortgaged my soul to Japan or Munich.It isn’t perfect, far from it, but it is mine.And if it breaks, then either I can fix it,
or else there is a good chance that I will know someone who can help.There are a lot of relatively low mileage two
wheelers sitting in people’s garages out there that aren’t used and can be
bought cheaply.These aren’t classics,
they are just old bikes.Use them, don’t
polish them.Something worth considering
in the current economic world.

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